Whilst about to prepare my first espresso of the morning, I noticed a flash in the sky; many more followed in a silent (and distant) storm. All of a sudden we got one closer to home - and out went the lights (it's been a very dark day). My UPSs soldiered on for five minutes and then we lost everything - Internet connection, weather station - the lot.
A fairly widespread outage - Kadina was affected, which is not usually the case when we lose power - took about three hours to rectify. My wife and I got extremely bored, although I had the entertainment of getting the generator going so that we would have running water at least.
Ah, the generator; I thought it was using a lot of fuel the last time I ran it; this is no surprise as the fuel hose had softened at both ends and had been oozing (unbeknown to me). Today the hose fell off, spraying petrol everywhere; luckily the engine was not yet hot. I managed to make a repair using a length of automotive fuel hose and some proper (screw up) hose clamps. I'm going to speak to the retailer and try to get hold of the details of the importer - this is clearly defective, dangerous, and should probably be bounced to Trading Standards to get a product recall going before someone tries to get electricity and ends up with a major fire.
My wife had the delight of her lunchtime soup re-heated on the emergency gas stove; I'm just hoping that I don't have to find out how to use it to finish of a half-roasted chicken; we've got plenty of spare gas cannisters, but...
